


Arrivals

by Jameson9101322



Category: Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-17
Updated: 2019-05-16
Packaged: 2020-03-06 14:55:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 12,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18853351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jameson9101322/pseuds/Jameson9101322
Summary: originally posted Nov 2008. A series of short scenes about the Digital Warriors as they passed to Nirvana.





	1. Serph

Serph//Varna

~~~  
**Not Nirvana**  
~~~

Serph awoke dazed.

He was laying face down in a pile of hot dust, the intense heat of the naked sun beating down on his back. Everything around him was baked brown like dried mud and caked in the same heavy dust that now filled his nose and eyes. Serph shook it out of his silver hair as he rose to his knees.

This was not Nirvana, he was certain. He knew what Nirvana looked like.

He'd never told anyone the vision he had of Nirvana. All the Karma Temple had shared with them was the promise of 'paradise' in all its ambiguity, but from the start he'd had an image of what this magical location was like.

It was a seashore; cerulean blue above and white sand below. He could hear the waves and gulls even now, and recalled the feeling of friendship and belonging that lived there. The sun was a pure, shining white disk in the sky.

But the angry sun hanging above him now was heartless and black. Serph shielded his eyes from it's light and got to his feet. When he looked up again he was face to face with the death scream of a stone man. The Embryon stepped back, but realized quickly the creature was fake. It's expression was shockingly lifelike and left him uneasy. He sidestepped the statue and moved into the street.

A gust of singeing wind kicked clouds of dirt from the high windows of the broken buildings, the time weakened walls creaked dangerously all around. He moved into a shadow cast by the setting sun, his eyes still coping with the bright light.

Serph had no idea where he was. It wasn't Nirvana and it wasn't the Junkyard, perhaps the white light that had separated him from his friends had dropped him somewhere in between. Perhaps he was in limbo, stuck between heavenly paradise and a rainy Hell. This was the real purgatory, being the only living creature in a land without  
mercy, finding emotions only to be left in despair. It was damning, but he couldn't let it crush him. There was more here to find, and hope he would be proven wrong.

The burnt orange around him was slowly fading to red as night came on, the statues standing thick in the street taking on goulish shades of dark brown like skinless burn victims frozen on the sidewalks. Serph moved between them, noticing their individuality and sense of identity. Their random placement suggested an organic element; it wasn't long before the thought occurred that they were once alive. Stranger things had happened to the people he cared about than turning to stone.

He came across the sculpture of a woman shielding an infant and was convinced.

"Demon!"

Serph turned on his heel to find a robed figure staring at him from a shadowed joint in the exposed skeleton of a building, his silhouette fluttering in the breeze. The Asura reached for his pistol but found it missing, lost, he assumed, in the freefall between worlds. The figure let out a strange hiss under his breath.

"Don't deny it, pig. You are demon. Demon!"

Serph frowned and stood his ground, staring down the stranger. The muscles in his legs were tight as he stood poised for action, the hissing stranger coughed a raspy laugh from what sounded like paper lungs. Serph realized his stance was protecting the mother and child.

"I don't know what you're doing here, gray soldier." The figure said, its cape billowing. "But night is coming, and the city of gods empties its monsters into the streets at night. you'll be food for them in an hour. Are you prepared to fight?"

Serph's frown deepened.

"Are you ready to die?"

He clenched a fist, his tag ring digging into his hand.

The figure moved fluidly down the side of the building, purpling light revealing lizard like undulations beneath its cloak. Serph thought he saw a tail flick out behind and set his strategy. This was no man. Serph's Water Crown began to glow ice blue.

The figure hissed another laugh. "Yes." He reached the ground and rose to full height in a patch of bloody sun. His cape left the ground like a tattered brown ghost as an elongated, scaly body unfolded nine feet into the air. "Yes! Change, Demon! No mangod shall devour you! You dine with me tonight!"

The lizard demon's claw tore the cape from his face revealing a jagged split jaw and a halo of thirty eyes. Serph gasped and braced as the lizard struck with viper speed. The Embryon stepped backward, his foot crushing the chest of the mother into the child. Icy fractures like circuits spread across his face.

He felt the hunger welling inside him, his body rewriting itself into a new form. His cells and codes exploded in size and structure as blades sliced the air and Varna appeared in his stead. The Lizard hissed happily, but his joy was cut short. Varna, with a crown made of bone and arms loaded with muscle driven swords, was a king among demons. Before the marauder could utter another word, his torso was split from his legs. Blood spewed in sprays as the two halves fell. Varna grabbed the head and retracted his blade, wrapping the sharpened edge around the skinny neck like a bear trap ready for the slightest touch to spring.

"M-Monster!" The half lizard wailed. "What manner of creature is this!?"

Varna bared his fangs and growled. His other claw drove deep into the exposed guts underneath. The lizard screamed and clawed the arm holding his head suspended. The sun finally dipped beyond the arches of a distant glass dome. The still air suddenly went dead around them and Varna dropped his victim to listen to the space.

A bang. An echoing clack. A long sustained grate...

"It comes!!!" The dying lizard howled in madness below. "It comes! The Wave from the gods! The hunt! The feasting!!!!"

The sound of hundreds of marching feet shook dust from the sills of the glassless windows above them. The bruise colored sky faded from deep-green to scab-brown above them. The footsteps became less uniform, punctuated with sighs and growls. Varna understood what was happening, he was in a world of demons and twilight marked the hunt.  
He grabbed his half lizard and its cloak, ducking into a darkened shop. Transformed back to human form, he took a bloody bite of his kill and settled in for a long night. It was best to stay out of sight in the face of so many attackers, the darkness of this old house would shield him for now, and the cloak would mask his unique appearance during the day. This mad demon would provide him strength for the journey. In the morning he would move to the streets again, searching this world for answers the Junkyard did not provide, and for his comrades.

Sera promised she'd find him when his purgatory went white. His last bleached out memory of his former life was her smiling face weeping as they were pulled apart. He hoped she was alright, and that space was the only thing that separated the two of them in this living Hell. She was a part of his vision of Nirvana. Paradise couldn't exist  
without her.

In the distance demons and humans charged their way underground. On the roof above Serph's shelter, a black cat with one silver ear curled up for a night without sleep. It waited there with its tail twitching, watching over him through the night.


	2. Angel

Angel/Harihara

~~~  
**Crash**  
~~~

“Code green! We’re green across the board! She’s crashing! Director! Director!?!”

/’Green.’/

“She’s not responding!” the Medico said, checking monitors. From the room below, the EGG let out a terrible howl.

/’David.’/

Muffled voices could be heard through a hazy fog. Jenna Angel, the Chief Technical Director, was flitting between consciousnesses. Part of her was in this room with the frenzied talk, but part of her was suspended in white, floating through digital space with no mooring. She could feel a tingling sensation throughout both mind and body.

“The interface is off the charts!” A Computech cried from the EGG monitor. “The Cyber Shaman is rejecting the serum. Fortitude breaking down. Interface flat-lining sir, we’re offline.”

/’The Cyber Shaman’/ Angel comprehended, her thoughts echoing. /’Seraphita.’/

There had been a battle atop a tall tower. That girl and her awful AIs had resisted....

“Offline!?” The acting Director cried. “It can’t be.” He turned back to the Medico. “Disconnect Angel, bring her back!”

“I can’t just pull the plug on her, her data is interfaced.” The Medico replied. 

The acting Director panicked. “But we’ve lost the interface!”

Angel felt her blood boiling in her body from far away. That terrible girl. Disrespectful. Setting her so-called friends on her own parent. It sounded from the voices in the ether that she was still fighting from within the EGG, taking out her pain on the system; unable to cope with what happened five years ago. The tingling gained intensity, causing Angel to flinch like her bones had suddenly caught fire.

“Sir!” The Computech interrupted. “There’s a spike! It’s massive, its overloading all our systems! It’ll wipe us out!”

“Close down the main drives.” The acting Director said. “Enable firewalls!”

“On it!”

/’Wipe us out?’/ Angel’s fury increased. /’Wipe us out!? How dare she!?’/

There was a demon inside her - inside Angel - there was a demon fighting hard to be released. Harihara seethed just under the surface, and Angel could hear her own voice in her head.

/’Rend. Slaughter. Devour...’/

The Medico checked the readouts on her patient. As far as she could tell, the Chief Technical Director was unconscious, channeling her thoughts through a helmet that allowed her to manifest herself in the virtual world inside the Asura project. Her brainwaves and blood pressure spiked in time to the data surges in the EGG. These shocks to the Director’s system caused her heart to beat erratically. Every skipped beat made the Medico gasp.

Inside the Director’s head, a storm raged.

/’I was so close! So close to completion. But then she had to interfere, and now she is destroying my work. If she hadn’t kept those bothersome AIs I could control her easily. She’d be lonely and helpless. Instead she has her counterfeit friends to protect her and guide her and remind her constantly of the calamity that had caused all this. Faces of the dead...’/

/’David!’/

Suddenly the lights in the room began to flash, alarms blared and monitors streamed lines of indecipherable code. An earthquake shook the EGG chamber, snapping wires and creaking pipes. Fluids sprayed the space from the waving arms of severed hoses. The forward window of the observation room was hit hard with a spay, leaving a sick greenish smear and obscuring view of the EGG chamber and the chaos within. Drops like bile migrated downward in thick sinuous paths.

/’It couldn’t have been him... It wasn’t possible!’/

The shaking became too much for the scientists to balance. They abandoned their tasks and clung to their stations as glass broke in CRTs and sparks rained from shorted electronics. The medical cabinets set up around the Director’s abandoned body shook violently. The Medico screamed as she was crushed by a workstation. The acting Director ran to the Medico’s aid, but an intensified tremor threw him against the wall. The legs of Angel’s cot scraped across the floor. 

/’She never knew him. How could she find him. How dare she!?!’/

“What’s the status!?” The acting Director cried. “What’s happening!?”

/’Not David. Not him’/

“System failure network wide!” The Computech shouted to him. “Its the apocalypse all over again! It’s the end of the world!”

“No!” The acting Director shouted. He ran to the console. 

/’David is dead.’/

The earth shook again.

/’David was MINE!’/

An explosion sprayed half the room with embers. The acting Director shoved the Computech from his place at the computers and jabbed at the keyboards while the monitors continued to regurgitate streams of garbled information. Angel could feel the rage of the demon welling in her much closer this time, the flow of white data heated her skin from within, and she could feel the palpitations of her heart. The audio readout systems blared a flat-line as her heart finally froze and Angel’s body crashed on the table. Her mind raced.

/’How dare she take him for herself! David was mine! To recreate him.... To claim him as her own. Unforgivable! Worse than crashing the system, destroying my facility and erasing all my research... Worse than trying to kill me back in that junk heap. Stealing his memory from me; that is the ultimate offense.’/ 

A glow overcame the still body, flickering patterns lighting the darkened space as fluorescent bulbs burst and rained more hot glass on the scientists. Harihara’s presence resonated in the air.

/’SHE SHALL BE PUNISHED!!!!’/

Another tremor cut the power. All lights dropped throughout the facility. The EGG glowed from within and split grotesquely up the side, emptying hundreds of gallons of nutrious chemicals onto delicate electronics. Waves of electric static raced up the sides of the room, illuminating ghastly shadows and vanishing in the wink of an eye. The observation windows shattered. White light overwhelmed all five senses.

A sense of serenity overcame the compound. 

Sound returned first. The acting Director picked himself up off the console where he’d left a bloody stain from a slice in his head. The Computech he’d dethroned was semiconscious on the floor, covered in broken glass. He heard the sobs of the Medico still crushed under the heavy machinery. His eyes struggled to recover from the blinding light. Far below the naked form of the young girl, the Cyber Shaman, lay coiled in a draining pool of fluids. Behind him he heard a crash.

The Chief Technical Director, Jenna Angel, threw the interface helmet across the room, her black eyes shining an unearthly gold; vile and full of hatred. 

“What happened?”

“S..Sir!” The acting Director cried, backing up along the console and tripping on a chair. 

Angel stepped forward, her feet crunching glass. “What happened!?”

“Ma’am, I don’t know Ma’am!” He studdered. “Suddenly it went haywire! We don’t know the cause-!”

“What damage was sustained!?” Angel demanded. “What have we lost!?” 

“A-all of it.” The Computech, recently roused and cut to shreds, answered weakly from where he was draped across his chair. He clicked a button on the now functional monitor. “Stage 1 is gone.”

“Gone.” Angel said.

“Yes.” He answered, his hand shaking. “All memory deleted.”

Angel felt a conflicted mess of emotion. The shock of losing her data, the outrage she had at these supposed professionals, and a deep sense of peace. He was gone, that terrible green AI doppelganger was gone.

The acting Director trembled in her moment of hesitation. “S-s-s-sir?“

Her gold eyes flashed. She stared daggers into her replacement. “I left you in charge of the project. You were to prioritize the data at all costs. How can we have lost everything!?”

“It was unforeseen, Sir!” The acting Director cried. 

“UNACCEPTABLE!” Angel roared. White tendrils were working their way up her neck and down her arm. The acting Director threw himself against the wall.

“No... No, Chief Director! Please!”

“SILENCE!” With a flash she broke shape. Her arm became a robotic cord of scale and talon. Harihara. It ripped the terrified man open from collarbone to hip like a bolt of bladed lightning, adding his bright red blood to the sickening color of the nutrious fluid staining the floors and shattered windows. The sanguine spray dappled the pureness of her white suit.

Her voice growling hoarsely, she turned to the Computech on the floor. “What of the Cyber Shaman!?”

“She was evacuated, Ma’am.” The man answered weakly. “Ground level.” 

“Out of my way!“ Angel reeled in her transformed arm and flew out of the room like a whirlwind. She charged down the stairs and entered the EGG. The air in the chamber was humid and smelled like copper and burnt wire. An ocean of sustaining fluid emptied slowly below and sparks flashed spontaneously from broken connections high above. Angel stopped and stood over the sleeping girl, white tendrils climbing further up her porcelain face from the Maelstrom atma in the center of her chest. Harihara wanted out. She wanted to feed. She wanted to drink in the essence of chaos itself. 

“Seraphita...” The half-demon hissed. “Disobedient child.”

Sera stirred.

“You will pay for what you’ve done.”


	3. Cielo

Cielo/Dyaus

~~~  
**Roof on the City**  
~~~

“Aw, my head!”

Cielo sat up in an overflowing dumpster, tattered paper and trash sticking in his elaborately braided blue hair. He ruffled the dreads to dislodge the refuse and scrambled his way to the edge of the container where he flipped over the lip and flopped backward into another pile of garbage in the middle of a dark dirty street. Cielo groaned and put his head in his hands. “Dis is nasty! Where am I?”

The place was dark and closed, the sky shrouded by the walls of the surrounding buildings. The whole place smelled stale like rot and excrement. He wrinkled his nose and heaved a heavy armed shrug. “At least it ain’t rainin‘.” 

The road before and behind was deserted save for a rat squeezing its way down a drain. He was horribly confused about what had just happened to him. The last thing he remembered he was on the roof of the Karma tower; now he was alone in an alley. 

This wasn’t right; his comrades were missing. They’d all been on the pinnacle when the white light came down to take them to Nirvana. They were supposed to be together there now, but instead he was in some filthy city by his lonesome. At lest he was fairly confident this was not the Junkyard. Even at its worst the Junkyard was pretty clean. He must have wandered into Nirvana’s low-rent district. 

Serph and the others were around here somewhere. Things would make sense when they were all together again. He headed toward the civic center at a jog, the closer he got, the stranger the place seemed to be. He began to notice people in the shadows. “Serph?”

The figures in the dark scurried away from the sound of his voice. Cielo ran after them. 

“’Ey, wait! Come back!”

The shadow people were gone without a trace, leaving him in a system of backroads where sad and homeless people lingered like wraiths in the artificial light. Cielo gasped. Even in the Junkyard he’d never run into people this destitute, there were children without parents, people without food or clothing, elderly without shelter laying dirty and weak in nests of newspaper and sack cloth. This wasn’t Nirvana, it couldn’t be.

He needed to find Serph, his leader, Serph’d know what to do next, Cielo wanted Argilla’s compassionate words and Heat’s determined strength to ground him, he wanted Gale to explain why nothing was what it was supposed to be, and he wanted Sera to make everything okay again. He couldn’t be alone in a place he didn’t know, he wasn’t smart enough or clever enough to handle this solo. Dark weary eyes stared up at him from the filth, studying his strange hair and peculiar dress. One child crawled out from behind her mother and screamed, she’d gotten a glimpse of his Rainbow Arch atma printed high on the thigh of his right leg. 

“Demon! Demon!”

Cielo threw himself against the opposite wall in shock. Grunge covered men appeared from branching alleyways holding clubs and bats as if waiting for an excuse to be seen. The Embryon finally reacted when he saw a gun under one of their coats. “No, you’ve got it all wrong! I’m a good guy!”

“Shut your mouth you Karma scum.” A man with few teeth snapped with a lifetime of bitterness.

“No I’m serious!” Cielo protested. “I’m looking for some friends of mine...”

“Friends!?” Another man scoffed. “You mean food!”

“Why won’t you believe me!?” Cielo persisted. 

“Because you have a demon mark.” An old woman wrasped in hate. “Monsters like you only have one purpose...”

Cielo couldn’t deny his atma. Flustered and confused, he took of down the road to be barred by a gang of juveniles with broken bottles and pipes. In seconds he was surrounded by a bloodthirsty mob each face etched in self-justified vengeance without a glimmer of compassion. 

No one was going to listen to reason or bury the hatchets they were carrying. He felt the desperate need to run but saw no escape but up.

Dyaus could kill every one of them in seconds. The demon in him could devour and lay waste to every man woman and child with a stone to throw and Cielo knew it. He didn‘t want to hurt them, but his fear was causing the Rainbow Arch to glow like blue flame. He covered it with his hand but circuit-like data crept out from underneath, winding its way around his leg. A woman screamed and pointed. A single phrase started the violence.

“Get him before he tunes!”

Cielo threw his hands over his head in defense but before he was struck by a single blow, the demon was out.

Dyaus exploded skyward without hesitation, his magnetized wings slicing through skin and tossing bodies in rapid ascent. There was enough of Cielo’s mind in the monster to judge his actions but Dyaus was hungry. He craved for sky. He wanted altitude and freedom and security in a comfortable environment. From the air he could find his leader. He could find Serph and the others and together they would be okay. He could see where he was. This had to be the Junkyard. There was no way this violent, terrified place could be Nirvana.

He was thrown from the Karma temple in the blast. He was sent across the gray junkyard from the top of the pinnacle, farther than he‘d ever been before. From the air he would see Muladhara. He’d fly home and find his leader waiting there with his comrades. And Gale would be explaining some kind of strategy around the console. And Argilla would disagree with his logic. And Heat would call her emotional. And Serph would shake his head. And Sera would be thankful that they’d all survived and were all okay and were all home. 

Dyaus shot straight up as high as he could get when suddenly....

Thunk.

Flipping end over end the demon fell toward the ground, his head splitting from an unexpected blow. He recovered his decent and hovered in space, waiting for his horizon to level out. 

Had they thrown a rock? Not at the height he was at. Had he hit a building? A mountain? He was above all the neighboring rooftops already and the impact had come from above. Dyaus flew back up cautiously until he pressed his nose against the point of impact. A smooth hard surface hovering parallel to the ground. It was not supported by walls or columns- it wasn’t possible. 

There was a roof on this town!

Dyaus refused to believe it. His precious sky was around here somewhere, he raced along the flat surface to find it.

No no no no! 

There weren’t even cracks in this slab, the earth and stone ceiling was impenetrable. Dyaus raced over the city center, he flew as far as he could until he hit a corner. A corner in the sky. No way.

No no no!

The corner followed a wall. The wall led to another corner. That corner met a wall which met a corner, a wall, a corner and a wall again leading him right back to where he began. 

No no NO!

There was no sky in this world! There was no openness or vastness or freedom! He was trapped in a cage, stuck in this horrible little prison with dirt and grime and people with bats trying to hurt him. Forget Nirvana and Purgatory. This was Hell. 

He raced around in a white streak until he was exhausted and drooping. No friends, nothing familiar. Claustrophobia and lost hope weighted him until he was skimming the rooftops. He had to be dreaming this punishment, what had he ever done to deserve complete and total abandonment? I mean sure he’d eaten some people...

“There it is! Get it!”

“Wha...?”

Dyaus looked down to see a pack of men dressed guerrilla style and carrying weapons. They were following close and aiming upward. He would not be caught alive. 

Dyaus opted for altitude again even though he knew it was a useless endeavor. His stomach was growling and his energy waning. The figures on the ground scrambled to keep up. 

“He’s getting away!”

“Load the poison shells!”

Bullets rattled and peppered the sky. One of them struck and Dyaus suddenly seized with pain and tumbled again, unable to shake the shock of the impact.

“I think we’ve got a weakness, boys!” A celebratory voice called. “Load the nets.”

“Nets!?” Dyaus panicked. 

“Nets loaded!”

“Okay fire!”

The humans’ shot was true, Dyaus was caught in the flying net, bound in ropes from the blade on his head to the opposable thumbs on his toes. Despite his midair captivity, Dyaus’s sturdy wings found the magnetic fields and righted him. He took flight again, but the he was being reeled in like a fish.

A smaller cage that pulled him to the ground; he was unable fly at all.

What was this horrible place? Why was this happening to him? Why did they have to take the last thing he had from him? What was the point in trying?

Serph? Gale? Argilla? Heat?

Sera, where are you?


	4. Argilla

Argilla/Prithivi

~~~  
**Drive**  
~~~

Argilla was weak and sore. She stumbled through the filthy streets of a dark city completely lost. Nothing looked or felt familiar, and she felt it was beyond her ability to understand why.

She'd come from a self-contained world; a place she knew intrinsically not matter where she was. She couldn't explain it, and she didn't even notice it when she was there, but her life in the Junkyard had been subconsciously and intuitively familiar. No matter where she'd gone within those borders she'd retained a sense of peace that no matter what happened, at the very least she knew where she was. Even in places she had never been, she knew where she was.

She had no idea where this was.

Gray had become brown, colors lay beside other colors haphazardly, there was no order or logic. In the distance she heard screaming and running, but she felt powerless to help them. She was so weak.

She needed someone - one of her comrades - someone to help ground her. She wanted something familiar to latch on to and keep her centered. She didn't even feel like herself anymore; whoever she actually was. This place made even her thoughts feel foreign.

Argilla stopped at the end of the alley, hunger nagging at her self control. She needed to feed to get her head back in the game. There had to be demons somewhere in this place she could devour.

Or perhaps not. Maybe this was Nirvana and there were no demons. What should have been a wonderful thought came and went without a smidge of elation. She was so hungry, she had never been this weak before.

Actually she had. Once, back in the Junkyard, she'd been so hungry she couldn't stand, and Serph had picked her up and carried her on his back all the way home where Sera sang her a song and made her well again.

Serph... She wanted him here. He didn't say much, but what he did say always drove her. She felt like she had a direction and that is was embodied in him. He was her leader, she'd follow him anywhere. And Sera... Sera....

Sera had a power that had changed the world and made her what she was. Argilla owed her ego to what Sera brought with her to the Junkyard. Somehow she knew Sera was responsible for everything.

It was instinct in the Junkyard, but in this world Argilla felt no intuition. She was useless here and potentially dangerous.

The screams manifested in the form of a man dressed in jeans and a t-shirt with no visible tribe markings. Argilla watched him sprint past her alleyway and off down the road in histerics closely followed by several men in white suits with arm bands. She thought she saw blue. Brutes? No, she wasn't in the Junkyard. She had no idea who they were.

The man at the front of the pack transformed, becoming a half-bird monster that pounced on the fleeing man. In seconds his fellow pursuers had changed as well and together they voraciously consumed him in the middle of the street. Argilla felt a shock.

This was familiar: it was a hunt, but they were hunting innocent people. There was no fight for life and death, he hadn't even transformed. She felt sick and gagged, heaving once but her stomach was empty. She turned and ran away from the carnage, ignoring the sore pull of her muscles as she pounded her way down there street. At last she was too weary to continue and collapsed crying against the incline of a grime-covered staircase.

"Serph." She sobbed aloud, her voice strangled by emotion. "Serph where are you?"

Another scream split the air and she flinched. Somewhere another victim had gone down, undefended, dying in a fit of terror and agony. Argilla cried harder into her arms. She wanted to leave this place, she'd trade the torment of the Junkyard over the terrible sounds in the city around her. Laying on the steps she half believed the Junkyard had been a dream her brain had conjured to block this harsh reality out.

She heard a scream close by. A child.

Argilla's sobbing stopped. She felt the ripple of corruption radiate out from the atma symbol on her chest and rose slowly to her feet. A young teen in a pageboy cap was running from two blue-banded soldiers. "Take this one alive!" On of them shouted. "We've got a quota!"

"Quota...." Argilla growled. The boy tripped and fell. His predators began to look notably delicious.

There was a flash and a snap as Prithivi the vine-armed demon took over Argilla's body. Nine-foot tall, lithe and covered in scales and barbs, the demon rushed forward and took the soldiers by surprise. They turned and gasped but were slashed with her barbed hands; claws raking. They fell in a spray of blood. The young boy was frozen, terrified as Prithivi snarled and fed upon the body of the fallen soldier. Once she'd had her fill she snapped her eyeless head toward the child below her. "What's going on here?"

"I - I - I..." The boy stammered.

Prithivi was drooling blood down her front. She could feel the boy's trembling through the ground. Suddenly a voice rang out from a cross street. "Randy!"

The kid in the dirt scrambled to his feet and ran for it, joining a second boy in a similar hat. Prithivi took a moment to regain self control: with food in her stomach it was actually within her abilities. As a human she'd be able to...

Another guard! Two of them! Chasing after the children!

The one in back was transforming into something that looked like a flying seahorse. It'd only be a couple bites...

Prithivi leaped into the air, arms unfurled like streamers arcing circles above her head. She came down and caged the monster, taking generous bites. The second guard turned and gawked, then began transforming too. "Have you gone mad!?"

Prithivi threw the seahorse away. "Have at me!"

He growled and became an orc-like monster. He led with an ice attack but quickly became an orc-like entree. Prithivi was just too powerful.

Vibrations in the pavement told her the two boys were running up the street. Guards were everywhere, the ground alive with footfalls both human and demon. The Argilla part of Prithivi was still horrified by the reality of the situation: demons hunting non-demons for food. Her mutated body was filled with the drive to shield the innocent. Unexplained, sure, but it was the first clear direction she'd gotten since she'd groaned awake in a mud puddle, and it was fully within her physical ability to see it through.

She dashed around the corner, long arms reeled in for speed and long legs providing the muscle. Randy and his friend rounded the corner up ahead and screamed. Randy was thrown back into view by an arm-banded soldier. Prithivi t-boned the masked man at a run and killed him on impact. Randy shrieked and ran back into the alley. "Fred!!!"

Prithivi was getting full, but the demon madness was getting stronger. Argilla knew she was running the risk of becoming blood crazed and mindless. It lowered her strength and defense, but she had to change back. With a moment's pause, drool falling in ribbons from her teeth, she was encompassed in shimmering light and changed back into  
the pink-haired, gray-clad woman from the Junkyard. She took a moment to check herself, then followed the boys down the side street.

Turns out it was a dead end. Fred was backed into a corner by one guard and Randy was being beaten by another. Argilla ran to his aid, slugging the soldier across the face. Randy looked up, amazed as the solder went down, bleeding from his nose. Argilla nodded to him and moved to rescue Fred.

Fred was probably fifteen, dressed in incorrectly sized clothes and wearing a determined and venomous expression on his face. Argilla could tell at a glance that this boy wouldn't die without a fight. He probably was going to die, but he was going to leave scars.

Argilla couldn't help but smile, even if it was a bit inappropriate for the scene. She sauntered up and clubbed the soldier in the back of the neck, dropping him like a sack of bricks.

Fred watched him fall in confusion then focused on the fuchsia eyes of his savior. She grinned and cocked her head. "I'm Argilla." His eyes brightened, the look of relief bringing youth back to his face. She flipped her pink hair. "I think we can help each other."


	5. Gale

Gale//Vayu

~~~  
 **Path of the Dead**  
~~~

The white light faded to black and when he awoke. His hand was empty. 

Gale surfaced from the rubble of a broken storefront in a sun-baked city he did not recognize. It was the exact opposite of his accustomed environment and while he admitted the Junkyard never really felt like ‘home’, this place was the definition of foreign. 

Yet... At the same time...

He balled his empty hand into a fist and shoved his way out of the splintered wood and drywall, beating dust from his clothes. He took in his surroundings, trying to surmise what he could. Before being an abandoned wreck, this building was a convenience store. Some of the wares still stocked the shelves, their labels time-bleached and unreadable. A large portion of the roof was missing in the front by the broken windows and the sunset sky was visible through the gaping skylight. The sight was stirring in some way, but he didn’t understand why. There was a lot he didn’t understand.

For one, he noticed there were no footprints in the caked dust, not even his own, meaning he had not walked into this place nor had he been dragged or carried. Perhaps he’d fallen from the sky?

No, the broken building parts he’d appeared in were on top of him when he awoke, so he must have appeared within the room by some other means. What those means were he could not say. It was outside his grasp of space and time and unexplained by logic. He forced the issue aside with great effort and moved out of the strange building to the street. His hand was still closed tightly.

No footprints there either. Where had she gone?

Where had everyone gone? Where were his comrades from the top of the Karma tower? Had they been scattered to the four corners of existence by the same nonsensical circumstances that found him here now? This new problem was as puzzling as the first. 

The laws of perceptible reality were broken. Everything he knew to be true now was not. It was a situation he’d had glimpses of in recent memory, but never with this level of totality. It was hard to believe all this change had happened so fast; not just in the world, but in himself. He shook his head. He’d clung so hard to normalcy and realism and now he was wandering alone in a deserted city wondering why he thought the sky was beautiful. He never could have imagined the kind of transformation he’d experienced mere hours ago but then, he assumed, at that point he was unable to imagine at all. The robot of a man he had been seemed disturbingly separate from him now. Like a different creature entirely. This raised questions of his identity and his purpose, which troubled and confused him even more. Perhaps he was thinking too much.

Impossible. Thinking was his greatest asset. If he put enough thought to these problems, he would find a solution to them in due time. Unfortunately he admitted, he could not afford to sit around and follow these lines to their conclusions. He needed to find out where this was. The thought occurred to him; was this Nirvana?

He checked the calf of his left leg. The Twister atma was still there; Vayu still lived inside him. Heaving a sigh of defeat, he closed his shocking green eyes and gave reality a chance to set in. If Nirvana was freedom from the demon curse, then he was not there yet. Could nothing go according to plan? What was the point of a strategy if fate was laughing at him?

He had to find answers to these questions. There had to be someone in this world who knew. He‘d been so close on that rooftop. He‘d finally come face to face with the mastermind of it all; the one who had given him these demon powers in the first place and started the changes that had led him to this place. If he’d had a moment with her she could have answered everything. Where had she gone?

He needed to find people even if only to find food. Too long and the demon would devour his mind and drive him mad. Gale sensed nothing inside him now, so at least he knew he had time. He moved across the filthy tile floor to the building’s entrance, removing years of dirt as he passed.

There was no life in the street outside the shop, but there were dozens of stone statues in varying states of degradation. He could not explain it, but he sensed these statues were the remains of living things. He felt a sudden twinge inside him and hesitated, pressing a hand to his chest. What was this? Sadness? Fear? Compassion? All of these? 

He walked up to the nearest statue, its face worn smooth by time and wind. He reached out slowly then drew back, his hand hovering an inch above the stone surface of the skin, shaking slightly. This was some kind of illness. If he touched them, would he catch it? Did he already have it? Would it kill him? Had it killed him already?

Were they alive or dead? Were they brittle? Would they break? Would he? 

Gale let his hand sit lightly on the statue’s shoulder. 

This was wrong. Something like a shudder or a sob shook its way down his spine. He suddenly felt sick and let go, stepping away from the figure with his arm still outstretched. He looked down at his open palm. It was fine, but still empty.

When had he let her go? At what point had Angel’s hand slipped from his grip? He’d been holding so tightly... 

The shadows were getting longer as the blackened sun dipped lower through the broken city. Gale followed the line of the stone statues' shadows across the cracked ground to twenty or so other figures standing frozen mid-stride, all facing the same direction. It looked to him like an exodus, all the people moving toward a common goal or from a common enemy. He stepped slowly through the forest of bodies, following their path away from the setting sun. 

For a reason he could not comprehend, these corpses felt familiar to him even though the heads and faces were either damaged or missing on every single one of them. The figures began to condense and bottleneck until he found their unified goal; a door in a blank cement wall. He stood still and stared at it, the statues around him reached out desperately for the handle; some on their knees, others frozen off balance and fallen to pieces at its threshold. He felt a bond with these people as he stood motionless in front of this door, and a sense of injustice rose within him. He was no different than these figures. He was one of them. They had died trying to get this far, and through an unexplained emotional discomfort, it felt wrong to go where they could not.

Gale shook himself back to his senses. These feelings were irrational, what point would staying here serve? He was alive and unaffected by their disease, therefore the only aspect they shared was that none of them had yet passed through this unknown door. He stepped forward and took the handle, pausing a last time to glance backward over his shoulder. 

Maybe fifty faces stared back eyelessly; faces contorted in shock; cracked or broken through weathering; screaming or sobbing in silence. Their stone hands were pressed toward him, clawing vacant air. At their feet he could see the path he’d taken through their procession, the only moving object displacing dirt in a death parade with no visible beginning or end. He balled his hand again and bowed his head.

He was here, real, and alive. He was not like them, but he carried with him some artifact of their suffering. Now, it seemed, he was beginning to understand. 

It didn’t matter how he came to this place, the fact was he was here. If he found his comrades in this city so be it, if he did not, he would carry on living. In but not of; he was life among death. He could complete the journey these others had started and see what kind of doom or safety they had died reaching for. He would take that torch and find what he desired most.

The door opened to darkness. As he descended the sunlight faded to black. His hand was still empty.


	6. Roland

Roland

~~~  
 **Wounded Soldiers**  
~~~

It was just amazing how he could throw back the bourbon. 

Seriously, sometimes he even impressed himself. Just taking it straight one shot after another. His tolerance had built up over the last two years, he used to get that blissful abandonment feeling after only one. He was a lightweight once, anything harder than beer would flush his cheeks and make him glad he didn’t drive. 

But it’s true what they say about practice. No it doesn’t make you perfect, it conditions. His body was used to the liver abuse by now, it’d gotten to the point where he could finish off a fifth of whiskey in a day if he was left alone to his thoughts and close enough to a bathroom. It’d gotten to a pretty bad point recently... He was pretty sure he’d poisoned himself a couple times, and he was pretty sure Adil knew it too. 

What a loser he was. 

Roland rocked forward in his chair to put his head in his hands. The bourbon was nearly gone and he didn’t feel drunk yet. Maybe it was time to break out the vodka. He didn’t like vodka as much, it was something about the lack of color, purely mental but still. It was probably because he started with beer, he was never a mixed-drink kind of guy. Even when alcohol was just something casual, he’d never get those high-classed mixed drinks. Just he and Greg hanging out drinking some beers. There was a time five-plus years ago when he could actually do that. How that time flies huh? Oh how it flies. 

Now he was a less-than-noble leader of a less-than-successful underground resistance unit. 

Aw, he wasn’t cutting himself enough slack, the Lokapala were an incorrigible little group of freedom fighters. He obviously wasn’t drunk enough yet.

He shoved himself up from his desk, the room spinning a little. He’d taken in a lot of the drug, maybe he was skipping drunkeness all together and moving straight to unconscious illness. Must make sure to sleep on his side when he finally goes. Maybe in the bathtub just in case. It’s always something like roulette when it came to getting plastered. He should write his next book on it.

The Essence of Plastering: A Novel Not About Repairing Drywall. Nice rambling title. He liked rambling titles. 

Who was he kidding, he’d never write another book. He hadn’t even finished the book he was on right now. He just couldn’t get behind it anymore, with the sun and all. His whole world view had changed since he started his work of fiction and it no longer sang to him like it used to. The languages he thought in were hard liquors and lists of unfulfilled responsibilities. 

Oh right. Vodka.

Roland hand-over-handed his way around the desk and toward his liquor cabinet which had steadily become a liquor wall in the last two years. He reached for his open bottle of cheap vodka and found it much lighter than he’d expected. Mostly gone? When did he do that? There was enough left for maybe a double shot if he used the Las Vegas glass. 

Oh well, don’t leave wounded soldiers I suppose...

He threw the bottle back in one gulp and dropped the empty container to the ground. It hit on the rim and cracked into three pieces. Roland rolled his eyes. “Great.”

Just then the door to his office flew open. The leader of the Lokapala was too mellow to jump so he just ignored it. His right hand man, Adil shouted at him from the doorway. “Roland!”

Roland rolled his eyes dispassionately toward him, most of his sloshy mind still on the assembly of bottles within arm’s reach. Adil was very excited about something, his shouts sent pangs of pain into Roland’s head. Maybe he’d skipped the passing out stage and gone straight to hangover. Damn that inconsistent chemical.

“Sir, we’ve caught something! A demon! He must be from the Karma society, come with me.”

Roland processed this slowly, looking back to the bottles. What lovely amber colors were there. Colored glass bottles catching and holding the light of the artificial bulbs like lightning bugs in beautiful little jars. There was something about the bend the light took through those glass walls, sticking in the water-like consistency of the drink within, consuming the honey in it like he would like to be at this very second. 

“A tuner huh?” Roland slurred out, slowly, his fingers moving lightly across the labels. 

Adil dropped his tone. “You’re drunk again.”

“Again?” Roland stifled a little laugh. “You say again like I’m not drunk all the time.” He found this more amusing than he should have. He was such a waste of good booze. “You know...” He gestured widely to the broken bottle on the floor. “I don’t even remember drinking that? I must do it in my sleep now. No wonder I can’t feel it.”

“How much have you had, sir?” Adil asked, coming across the room. 

“I’ll have the usual.” He replied, picking up another whiskey bottle. Not quite bourbon. Not quite full. Actually mostly empty. He looked inside and found one shot left in this one too. He’d been busy. Oh well, waste not want not. He moved to toss it back but Adil caught his hand.

“Roland, stop.”

Roland glanced sideways at him over the rims of his glasses. “I can’t feel it yet. I need something.”

“I’m surprised you can feel anything.” Adil said. He held Roland’s wrist and removed the bottle from his hand. “Sit down, sir, sober up.”

“I am sober.” He said, being led across the room. He fell into the seat like a back of bricks, his knees giving it up to gravity about halfway down. The trip made his head spin. “I’m not drunk yet, I’m not drunk...”

Adil frowned. “I don‘t believe you.”

Roland laughed again. “You’re a good man, Adil, you’re good at seeing things for who they really are.”

Adil heaved a sigh and crossed his arms. “Can you function? We have a tuner to interrogate.”

“A tuner?” Roland closed his eyes. “How did you catch him?”

“In a net.” Adil replied. “He was flying.”

“A flying demon?” Roland pried his head off the back of the couch. “Fantastic. What will they think of next?”

“He’s an unusual guy,” Adil explained. “Strange dress and mannerisms. He keeps talking about friends he has somewhere here underground with him and a junkyard somewhere else. I think he’s nuts. The Karma Society probably sent him to spy on us.”

Roland found this amusing too, but he had enough of a handle on himself to keep from giggling stupidly. The laughter manifested instead as a slow smile. “A crazed flying spy. I might need the drink to speak his language, so I guess he showed up just in time.” He shook his head and heaved his heavy bones back to standing position. “Alright, take me to him.”

“You’re sure you can handle it.”

Roland blinked slowly and adjusted his glasses. “It‘s the only way I can.”


	7. Fred

Fred

~~~~  
 **Something Strange**  
~~~~

There were a couple really big reasons why Fred did not trust adults.

First off, most the adults he ran into now a days were trying to eat him.

Second, the ones who didn't have him on a menu were all cowards or losers. They would run screaming from the Karma society like babies, leaving kids to fall in the way and get snatched up instead. There weren't people like his father anymore. Fred's dad had been the leader of the Lokapala and one of the bravest men in the entire world. He'd died two years ago defending his men against an ambush and left Fred in the hands of the new leader, Roland.

Roland wasn't a coward like the rest of them. At the very least he handled the struggling resistance group as best he could and tried to make sure everything was taken care of and that his men were alright. What Roland WAS was a loser. He was a boozed up sloppy mess totally useless as a guardian in nearly every way. Nothing like his dad. His  
dad had been a hero.

Today Fred could add another reason to his list of why adults weren't trustworthy - they were really confusing. The fifteen-year-old and his friend Randy had just evaded two Karma Society demons with the help of a strange pink-haired madwoman with inhuman fuchsia eyes. Like the Karma Society Soldiers, she could become a demon, but she chose   
the boys' side for no reason Fred could get his head around. She was suffering from kind of amnesia and babbled on about Nirvana and comrades and junkyards and kept pressing them for information on some kind of temple. It felt like they'd picked up an pink and gray alien from outer space.

But she had saved their lives, so Fred felt it was his job to get her out of danger. Going was slow and sloppy, for along with being confusing, adults were also big. Argilla coudln't fit into the spaces Fred and his posse usually hid, so the journey quickly became a long night of dumpsters.

The three of them were sitting in one now, fighting hard not to think about what kind of food and excrement was piled under their feet. The woman couldn't quite grasp the concept of "hiding" and kept peeking open the lid and speaking out loud to Randy and Fred who were afraid her voice would give them away to the patrolling soldiers. "I'm sure my comrades are somewhere in this city with us and we won't find them in boxes of garbage."

"Hush." Fred warned. "We'll never find them if you get us caught."

Randy couldn't help his curiosity. He raised an eyebrow and gave her a shrewd scan. "Are your friends dressed as weird as you?"

"Well," she paused and tugged the paint stain on her skirt. "They'll be wearing orange like this."

Randy smirked. "I guess that narrows it down."

"Look, lady, we don't have time for a wild goose chase." Fred told her, gruffly. "You can tell us all about your gang colors when we're safe."

"We're a tribe." She corrected. "The Embryon."

Randy gave Fred a questioning look. "What's an Embryon?"

Fred groaned. "Listen Argilla, we've got our own problems without worrying about your friends."

"But the others can help us." Argilla insisted.

Randy hushed them. "Shut up! Voices!"

Fred pressed his ear to the side of the dumpster. He could pick out two voices - they sounded like Karma Society thugs - interrogating someone not far off. Probably up the street. They sounded serious.

"State your business! Where did you come from?"

There was no answer.

"You just came from topside - state your business! Are you a tuner!?"

A low, patient voice inquired back to them. "Tuner?"

"Don't play games!"

Argilla's face appeared next to Fred's and scared him half to death. "Is that -"

Fred growled at her. "Shhh!"

The voices had grown more threatening, Fred heard the familiar sound of their shock sticks whirring up. Whoever they were talking to was gonna get it.

"Unidentified Tuner, you are under arrest. Put your hands on your head and come with us."

Fred heard the uncomfortable sound of electric spark striking flesh. The blow was followed by the scuffle of feet, and the impact of a body hitting the ground. So much for the unidentified tuner, Fred thought. Just as well, one less demon running around killing his friends. Argilla pressed hard against the wall, listening intently with lines of fear etched on her face. A moment's silence passed then the stranger's voice was heard again and the fear was replaced with relief. The stranger issued a warning. "If you do not want to meet the same fate as your comrade, I suggest lowering your weapon."

The karma soldier snarled deep with no intention of complying. "You bastard! You'll pay for that!"

Through the metal, Fred heard a staticky sound he'd grown to associate with blood and death. Tuning. It ran the boy's blood cold and cemented him to the spot. Argilla reacted as well, a pink light glowing at bust level and reflecting against the wall of the dumpster. She threw a hand to the lid, ready to leap out. Fred grabbed her around the waist on reflex. "No! You'll give us away!"

"That's Gale!" Argilla cried. Her voice rippled with a new and foreboding deepness. Fred looked up and saw her pink eyes glowing gold, the demon atma now visible in the dark lighting her face from below and corrupting the data on her chest. Randy screamed and Fred was stunned motionless, arms twisted around a woman who was quickly becoming a bloodlusting monster. Outside the inhuman snarls and slashing of flesh summoned memories of bloody corpses and faces once friendly warped and pale in horrific death. Argilla had killed the soldiers pursuing them the last time she'd turned. She'd eaten them alive right in front of them. Was she losing it to hunger again? 

Never trust adults, they'll eat you.

Argilla's body was changing, but unexpectedly she threw Fred aside. The lid flew off their hiding spot and she exploded out into the street as Prithivi, a chest-mouthed mace-wielding creature of rage. Fred and Randy cowered behind the lip of the dumpster but couldn't deny a look. At the end of the street was another demon, this one green with a split head and blood dripping down its front. The Karma Society soldier hadn't even finished changing before his head was gone. The two monsters faced each other from fifty paces, each poised for attack. Fred heard Randy gulp in his ear.

Suddenly Prithivi stepped back, her whip-like limbs relaxing and retracting up into her forearms. At the end of the street the new demon was reverting too, revealing a tall lithe man dressed in the same strange clothes Argilla was wearing. On his head was a large streak of orange paint.

"Its one of her comrades... An Embryo." Randy cried.

"Embryon." Fred corrected. He climbed over the lip of the dumpster and ran to the street where Prithivi had become Argilla once more. "Hey!"

"Gale!" Argilla cried. She ran for him and clamped herself onto his middle. The new tuner seemed uncertain about how to respond. Fred gave Randy the high sign and the two of them rushed over to the reunion.

"Wow." Fred said, admiring the dead bodies on the ground and the man who'd felled them. There was no fear in his striking green eyes. "You're pretty tough."

The stranger, Gale, passed him a confused look and let Argilla get the hug out of her system before speaking. "Who are these?"

"Oh, sorry." Argilla composed herself. "This is Fred and Randy... They're kids. They said they'd help us."

"Help us in what way?" Gale asked.

"Help you make it out of here alive!" Fred said, leveling a finger at them. "There're Karma jerks swarming this place, they'll eat us if they catch us!"

"Karma?" Gale asked. "Interesting." He addressed Fred with a level of intelligence and respect the boy had never heard from anyone in the Lokapala. They all talked down to him like they knew more than he did. This man was speaking to him like an equal. "You needn't concern yourselves with our safety. We have the same demon power as the soldiers. We can defend ourselves."

Fred gawked at him,. "Well, yeah, but..."

Gale turned his business-like tone to Argilla. "What of Serph, Heat and Cielo? Have you found them yet?"

"No." Argilla answered. "No, you're the only one we've found."

"Hm." Gale put a hand to his chin in thought. "This concerns me. It appears we have been scattered. We must find the others and recover Sera before we make any further steps."

"No, you need to hide." Fred said. He put his hands on his hips and struck an authoritative pose. "Listen, I've been around the block before, I know how things work around here. If you two are rogue tuners, the whole society is going to be after you. You guys need to get out of the street and under cover or you'll have more demons on you than you can shake a stick at."

Gale frowned and processed Fred's words with a nod. "I heed to your experience. You say you know a safe place for us to reconvene, can you lead us to it?"

"Uh, sure." Fred said. He gave Randy a strange look.

Randy shrugged. "Follow us I guess?"

"Yeah." Fred shrugged back. "Yeah! Follow us, we'll get you through safe."

"And we'll keep you safe from those creeps who become demons." Argilla winked. "We'll take care of each other."

"Take care of each other, right." Fred said, sarcastically. "Whatever you say."

The four of them picked their way through the alleys, avoiding Karma soldiers using back roads. The place they were headed to used to be a hotel, but was now a store house since no one had money to rent and the neighborhood was too bad to say in. When they were near enough to see, Fred directed Argilla's eyes toward it's curtained window   
at the end of the road in front of them. "That's where' we're going."

"I see it." She answered. "And the Society doesn't know where it is?"

"No, it's cool."

"Hey!" Randy whispered hoarsely, poking his head between them. "Your friend's gone."

Argilla's eyes widened. "What?" She turned and scanned the alley. "Gale?" Sure enough, he had vanished. Argilla seemed confused whether to be concerned or frustrated. "Where is he?"

There was a blunt sound and a thud around the corner and Gale suddenly appeared on the path ahead of them, a walkie talkie in hand. "There has been an alert. They've found another unidentified tuner."

Randy took a double take between where Gale was and where he had been. "Wait... How?"

Fred was more interested in the item he was carrying. "Is that a Karma talkie."

"It is nonfunctional unfortunately." Gale said, handing the box over. "I'd hoped it would give us a clue as to the whereabouts of our comrades. I took it off one of the patrolmen. He had just gotten word of an unidentified tuner located on the road ahead of us." He locked eyes with Argilla. "Dressed in gray with silver hair."

Her face lit up. "Serph!"

Gale nodded.

The woman ran forward and patted Fred on the back. "You can stop worrying about everything! Our leader is here!" She fixed her hair and rushed past Gale. "Let's go." Gale followed. Fred and Randy exchanged a glance.

"Demons who don't want to eat us and grown ups who talk to us like one of them." Fred rubbed his neck. "Adults confuse me."


	8. Heat

Heat/Agni

~~~  
 **Hurt**  
~~~

Heat awoke between the burn of the white cement sidewalk and the broil of a coal black sun. His head was pounding and the constant demon hunger was overwhelmed by thirst. He scraped his nails across the rough surface and shoved himself up to his knees. “What the Hell...”

The place around him was extremely clean and glaring white, a dramatic departure from the dreary gray chill of the Junkyard. He’d figured Nirvana was probably warm and dry, but not excessively so. He squinted and waited for his eyes to adjust but they never fully did. 

As far as he could tell he was in a shopping mall of some sort. Blotches of color he assumed were storefronts lined the wall of an alabaster skyscraper to his right. People dressed in identical white smocks and slacks moved between the windows like robots, never going inside and saying nothing to each other. Heat didn’t see Serph, Sera or the Embryon anywhere. The absence of Sera jarred him most.

He’d lost a hold of her atop the Karma Tower when the world was coming down around his ears. She’d fallen free of his grip even though he’d held on with everything he had. They were supposed to go to Nirvana together, but he’d leave the whole rest of his tribe behind for a chance to go with her. Now it seemed he lost her. 

“Damnit!” Heat pounded a fist hard on the cement and was jarred by how much pain it caused. Were they supposed to feel pain in Nirvana? Was he supposed to feel this hungry? Or this guilty?

Where was Sera? He wanted her like a mother, a sister, a daughter and a lover. It was such a confusing sensation but so very strong. It churned and ate away inside him like acid, punishing him for losing her. How could he lose the one thing that was important to him? He let her go right when she needed him most.

His stomach twisted. Had she fallen? The Junkyard was being destroyed around them by the green virus, the white light of heaven blew their platform to pieces and there was nowhere to go but down. If he let her go and she fell from that height, there was no way she’d survive, and that was assuming there was something to hit when she landed.

He scared himself with thoughts of her fragile little body hitting stone and exploding into a smear of gore all over the front steps of the temple. At that speed her bones would turn to powder, the blood would probably jump three stories and nothing distinguishable as a corpse would be left on the pavement. A stranger would walk up and be like “Huh, look, someone spilled thick soup everywhere.” And that someone would have been him, because he dropped his most prized possession and now she was street pizza. 

That couldn’t be what happened. The Junkyard had vanished. She’d probably fallen and kept falling until the world was reborn again. She was probably still falling right now in a strange eternal suspension without sight or sound. 

Was that what happened? Could she still be in the junkyard? She was a god right? The Cyber Shaman? Could she have saved herself?

Damnit he was supposed to be strong! Stronger than anyone in the junkyard - Serph, Varin Omega, Angel herself - They were all cowards. He was going to save Sera and take her to Nirvana with him, but he’d lost her at the last minute and fallen upward into the sky.

He couldn’t possibly have gone to Nirvana without her. There was no such thing as Nirvana without her, not if it was truly paradise. He’d never find happiness in a world where Sera was not, especially if her abandonment was his fault.

Of course it was entirely possible she hadn’t fallen to her death. Maybe there was still some of the tower standing and she was sitting alone there wondering why he’d left without her, the two of them separated by a gap in time and space he had no idea how to start calculating; he in heaven and she in purgatory.

It didn’t matter the distance, if she was alive he’d find his way back to her. He’d fall from grace and go back. It didn’t even matter if they’d be stranded to starve to death atop that hellish tower; he’d let her eat him to survive. She could take a limb at a time if she wanted, or just sit on the steps and gnaw on his hand while they laughed and talked together. No price was too great for her happiness, not even his life. 

Memories floated back to him slowly as he kneeled, bent over in the street. Angel had lost. Serph had broken that green ball and brought about the apocalypse, then everyone ran for the beacon. He’d been on the steps an inch from safety. He’d grabbed her around the middle; why hadn’t they made it to the light together? He’d never willingly leave her behind. 

She had... Resisted?

That’s right, Serph was thrown out into nowhere, and she’d stood on the steps reaching for him. Then the light came down and blew them apart. That must have been what happened.

No it wasn’t. She’d left him.

He remembered the moment’s suspension as the light blew everyone off their feet. He remembered her wriggling and scrambling until she broke free of his grasp. He remembered her using his body as a push off to propel herself through the air...toward Serph.

What was this pain he was feeling? It caved in his chest like a vaccum pulling hard on his stomach and his throat. The terrible ache at his heart was pulling him inside himself as tears burned hot in the corners of his eyes. 

Damn that Serph! Damn Nirvana! Damn this wrathful god!

Heat pounded his fist into the pavement again, hoping the bones would break with each impact to distract him from this hurt. How could she have chosen that skinny pale weakling over him when he was stronger and braver and loyal to the end? How could she have done such a thing? Over and over again she’d chosen Serph. Over and over and over! What had he done wrong? What hadn’t he made clear? He loved her! He loved her more than Serph could love anyone or anything in this world, that world, or the next world. 

He’d let her go, but she’d wanted to leave. But he’d let her go. 

She was a child, he was supposed to protect her. She liked Serph because he was gentle to her, he got that, but that pale, bony, mute automaton couldn’t save her when it came down to the wire. She was confused. And Serph was a bastard. And Heat could have kept her with him but he hadn’t. Now she was abandoned or dead and he was alone, hungry and hurting worse than he ever had in the pre-Nirvana junkyard that was supposed to be such a torment on his fellow asuras. Whatever. They had no idea what pain was.

Before making another move, he was body shocked to the ground by a passing walker. The smocked local tripped and snarled down at him before stepping over and leaving. “Creep.”

Heat’s eyes held tears of a new emotion. He stared venomously through the his fire red bangs. “Watch who you‘re shoving around!”

The white clad stranger was already ten feet away, but stopped mid stride, turned on his heel and stared at the man on the ground. “Excuse me?”

“I said...” Heat growled, staggering to stand. “Watch it.”

“Listen,” the local said with a pompous air that made Heat’s hackles rise, “it’s not MY fault you were doubled over in the street. You reevaluate who was in whose way.”

Heat was mad, and hungry, and nearly foaming at the mouth. “Whose fault was it then? Fate? God?”

“You’re the one acting crazy, it’s your fault!”

“My fault?”

“Don’t start a fight with me, my cousin is a policeman!” The stranger said, haughtily.

“My FAULT!?” Heat roared and the atma symbol on his forearm glowed with fractured light. The tendrils raced up his arm in an instant, tracing their way across his chest, around his neck and into his mouth. “Reevaluate THIS!”

He didn’t care who he killed, he didn’t care who he ate. He let all his hatred, frustration and guilt out at once, manifesting into a dual-headed monster with smoke rising from between its teeth. Agni, the demon of fire. The white clad stranger’s eyes bugged over the tops of his glasses. “A Tuner!”

Agni didn’t hear a word, he sprang forward and ripped the man in half. Red spewed across the flawless white in arches like the wings of a mangled butterfly. Up the street other shoppers shrieked. They ran but they were slow compared to the thick coiled muscles and long strides of the demon. He found and removed limbs without discretion, painting the town red in splatters and smear marks, desperate for anything to quell his rage. 

Agni was a monster. The last shred of consciousness Heat possessed toyed with the idea of letting go and surrendering to the bloodlust that now drove him into madness. What good was he alone in Nirvana? If Sera didn’t want him he was nothing more than this. Without being able to save her, he’d reduced himself to teeth and claws. Without Sera he had no purpose.

He soon ran out of moving targets, their blood tasted coppery on his tongues as he unceremoniously liberated flesh from bone like a starved animal. Heat’s spirit inside sank suddenly into a deep pit of despair. The ground looked like a giant bloodstain, bodies undistinguishable in the massacre, blood reaching fingers nearly three stories up the white building. 

What had he done? Why had he left her? Why had any of this happened?

“Yaksa Agni.”

He heard a voice and turned. A woman dressed in white robes stood smirking from the plaza entrance. She waved a hand to her squad of soldiers. “Clean this place. Dispose of these corpses like none of this has happened.”

Agni’s voice growled in his twin heads as he summoned conscious thought back to the forefront. “Who are you? How do you know me?”

“I am Madame Margot.” The aged woman replied. “I have great interest in you, and I know from where you have come.”

“Why have you brought me here!?” Agni said. “Answer or I’ll rip you apart!”

Madame Margot hung and shook her head sadly without the slightest hint of fear. “So much rage. I am sorry you have been saddled with this anger.”

“You know nothing of me!” Agni snapped.

“But I do.” She persisted. The black sun glinted off her tinted glasses. “Don’t you want to know what happened to Sera?”

Agni drew back, his voice raising timbre as Heat felt his core tremble. “Sera?” 

The red fractures faded and he was back in human form, struggling hard against the rush of surging emotion. “Sera’s here?”

“She is.” Margot replied. “I can take you to see her.”

“Take me!” Heat charged forward and grabbed her by her prim shoulders. “Take me to her now!”

Two soldiers ran and removed his grip. Margot raised a calm hand. “Patience. Calm yourself.” She turned and began walking slowly away from him. “Come with me. You will see her.”

Patience was not what he was good at. His mind raced with a million questions about his recent fate and Nirvana as the drones worked to restore the plaza to near perfect condition behind him.

The woman and her entourage led him to a tall tower full of twists and turns. Every floor made the fluids in his stomach rise. What would he say to Sera when he saw her? What would she think of him? He’d have to apologize for losing her, it was unforgivable of him to leave without her, but he had no words to say such things with, he was never good at expressing himself that way. He wanted the elevators to move faster and fidgeted and growled in his frustration. “How much longer!?”

“Patience.” Was all the woman said. “Patience.”

He was led down a hall through an unimposing door and into a medical lab where a casket lay closed in the center of the room. He froze in his tracks, for there was the girl, her porcelain skin unbroken and perfect beneath the glass. 

Heat ran to the casket’s side, pressing his hands against the glass in an effort to claw his way through. She lay motionless beneath.

“No.” He pounded harder. “No! She’s not... She can’t be-!?”

“Dead?”

He spun to face the woman, his cape fluttering.

“No.” Margot told him. “She is only sleeping. She has not woken since your escape. We are keeping her alive using the machines you see around you.”

“I.... I need her to wake up!” Heat persisted. “I have to help her! It’s my fault! How did this happen?”

“Calm yourself.” Margot said slowly. “None of this is the result of anything you have done.”

A sudden wave of hope amid a sea of denial nearly pulled him to his knees, instead he leaned on the glass of the casket staring down at the beautiful face of his love. “But I left her there...”

“I understand why you would feel confused.” Margot said. “You have experienced a lot of changes in a very short period of time, but I assure you, you are blameless.”

He closed his eyes and rested his forehead against the machine for a moment of gratitude.

“It was all the fault of a certain man, a man I sense you know very well...”

His eyes snapped open again and he felt a mix of fear and rage speed his heart. Something inside knew who she was talking about, and by the look on his face she could tell her words had had their desired affect.

“Come Heat.” Her voice beaconed him to follow her through the door. “I would like you to hear a story...”


End file.
